Scams. Frauds. Social media. All three of these tend to go together, but only one stands well in a positive manner on its own. It’s just too bad that the other two affect it so often.

It’s a fact that there are bad people in the world, and they thrive on selfish acts which help them but hurt others. It could be stopped if more people were aware of them, but in this fast-paced society influenced by social media, people ignorantly cry wolf time and time again.

Below we have several tips for you to find out how exactly to use social media to raise awareness of scams and frauds. There’s a right way to do it, and there’s a wrong way to do it. Read on to educate yourself.

Investigate The Scam Or Fraud

Right off the bat, you need to know what kinds of scams or frauds are out there. There are a variety of resources about them on the Internet, and some of them are right on social media sites themselves.

You may have run into a few of these or some variation of them on your own, and Twitter is also notorious for the last three. Understandably, they are quite frustrating and seemingly obvious, but people fall for them all the time. If they didn’t work, no one would make use of them.

Review Your Sources

The best bit of advice that I can tell you is this: review your sources. If you get nothing else from this article, remember that. How many times have you shared information only because you heard it from somebody else? Be skeptical, my friends. This world likes to embellish and exaggerate nearly everything.

Examine The Details

As already mentioned, the “please send money” scam is one of the hottest hoaxes out there. This is a slightly more difficult target to identify since it’s almost always an isolated case. For one, the message could be from a random user claiming to know you. For another, it could be seemingly from one of your already existing friends, but their account has merely been hacked by cyber criminal.

For a random person, you might as well hang it up. In my opinion, there is a 99.9% chance that it’s a total scam. However, if you’re feeling generous, see if you have any mutual friends and contact them about the issue. Don’t message their buddies for background info, though. For all you know, these are just puppets run by the criminal mastermind for appearance’s sake. After all, if it happened in Catfish, it could happen to you.

If perchance the message is from someone you know, find their number and call them. For those of you who are ultra-paranoid, you could even arrange for an in-person meeting to be on the safe side. If they truly want help, they may feel better speaking about it in a conversational manner. Else, this is the quickest way to get rid of a potentially big problem.

Report The Scam Or Fraud

After coming to the conclusion that you have stumbled upon a scam or fraud, your next plan of action should not be to run and tell everybody on your friends list. Instead, report the dirty scoundrel and let that piece of scum be handled by the proper authorities. But who are the proper authorities? The Internet Police? Wait. They don’t exist. Instead, take it up with the social media site itself.

Almost every site features a “report user” or “report post” button. Yes, it’s a little like a virtual dystopian government, but in this case, it’s functional. This will spark an investigation into the user’s profile, allowing them to be monitored for suspicious activity.

Inform The Public

It’s a good time to inform the public after reporting the scam or fraud. However, here are a few things not to do:

Don’t post copy-and-paste messages

Don’t share “warning” images

Don’t use scare tactics

Generally speaking, the only people who are going to pay attention to these types of updates are the ones who would share them as well. Unfortunately, these people are also the gullible ones who likely posted that picture of Bill Gates holding a sign claiming that he will give $5000 to anyone who shares it. Yeah, right.

Instead, post a brief, well-written message that is easy to process and doesn’t exaggerate too much. If it’s a large-scale scam, link to the article that you read, but do so with the understanding that most people will only check out the headline. Because of this, make it your duty to create a TL;DR version that is informational and unsensational. As for smaller scams, provide an explanation, and if you feel like calling somebody out in a “please send money” scam, link to their profile. That won’t hurt a thing.

Alternatively, you could send out a group message to those that you trust. Most people will not likely see your one status update, but if you get enough people to share the same information, you increase the number of social media users who are aware. This can create a chain reaction of shares, and in the end, that’s a good thing.

The Internet is a community like any other. In other words, you should consider it your responsibility to be a productive citizen who contributes to the well-being of your neighbors whenever you can. Be sure to remain calm and level-headed about anything you post.

Conclusion

The Internet is a scary place, and social media doesn’t help. That doesn’t mean social media is a bad thing, though. Criminals tend to use almost anything to carry out their activities. Even stuffed animals are sometimes filled with cocaine.

Have you ever fallen victim to a social media scam or fraud? If you haven’t, do you know of anyone has? How do you typically raise scam awareness and share information about scams and frauds? Did these tips help you?

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Lisa Santika Onggrid

March 27, 2013 at 4:07 pm

We struggle to keep facts straight. On the other hand people like to share, and unfortunately, sometimes without proper rationale. this is exactly the same way gossip spreads like a wildfire. Something sounds interesting, time to share.

An addendum to this article is the use of the internet to research the originator of the email or phone call, itself.In recent weeks I have been looking for a housemate, which has involved the provision of my mobile number on Gumtree - the Australian alternative to Craigslist. It, therefore, came as little surprise that I would have an increase in marketing phone calls. These were easy to deal with, in that I ask them to call me back, look it up online, save the ID'd phone number, then block the caller. I also received, however, a text message of very generic inquiry about the room I offer, asking me to reply to an email address rather than to the text message. Purely on a whim - I was bored - I looked up the email address on Google, and somewhat unexpectedly, received numerous results on a couple of accommodation forums.I'm not sure what the ultimate aim of the scam was, but it appeared to be a means of gaining information on email account, paypal account and through them, personal financial details. It wasn't the usual scam from what I understand, as it required money to be sent to me in the first instance, then for me to return some of that money. Any confusion would then be met with the threat of the Australian police. Of course, this is only according to the forum, as I didn't continue the contact, but worrying nonetheless. So now I have another blocked number on my phone, and a warning for you. Even if you're offering a room, a service, or something for sale, if you don't know the number, look it up.

That's right, as I've been recently been scammed through a job opportunity through Craiglist, where the person is having me think that he's someone else and caused me to believe that this is a serious issue. Most of these online scams grew from foreign countries prominently: Africa and Nigeria. The law enforcements doesn't deal with outside criminals and leaves us victims hopeless of stopping them.

If you've been a victim of such scam or fraud, report to the Internet Crime Complaint Center or file a report to your local police and don't stop there, put the information of the scammer to the public and let others be aware of such person using stolen or forged identity.

Don't believe that there are limited ways of people getting scammed, you'll be surprised the ways confidence can get over your head. Always question the authority of the people you're dealing with.